I am a voracious reader. Given that, I never use the NYT "Bestseller" list(s) to add content to my e-reader. When a "book" like 50 Shades of Gray can be on the list for almost a year...well, that should tell you something. Love to read? Ask your friends/family for recommendations. At least Amazon gives you some direction based on your previous buying history.

I love how the crappy Zappos book has an endorsement from Seth Godin, a hack who himself built a career writing sh*tty little "marketing" books (that are typically promoted by other sh*tty "marketing" authors). People worship the guy, but they're mainly the sorts of people who refer to themselves as "thought leaders" and "social media experts".

Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book made it to a best seller's list. It's hard to imagine Hoffman, being the man he was at that time,using this method.I,like many others,followed the title's advice and obtained a free copy.

Sadly, if you want a reputation as a "bestselling" author, this is one route. Or you have friends buy up a bunch of copies of your book, and then give them away as door prizes or "gifts" for joining their website. The gaming of sales numbers isn't hard, it just depends on who you want to promote. This goes for musicians or authors. It doesn't affect the quality of the work, only dupes idiots who are interested in hopping on board a train...

Heh. A friend of mine got one of her books as a gift from a conservative relative and gave it to me. I read about half of it before I began to worry that rolling my eyes that much was going to make them get stuck that way. When I took it (with a bunch of other books) to Powell's to sell the guy gave me a look and pushed it back. Sheepishly I was like "It was a gift." It was the only book out of about 20 or so they wouldn't take.

This sounds like the kind of thing Rich Shapero did (and apparently continues to do) with Wild Animus. I got a free copy when he was giving them away for the asking to BookCrossing members -- it was so terrible that it actually provoked complaints. It is stunningly bad, and I mean that in the nearly literal sense that if you read too much too long, it will have a severe impact on your higher cognition.

If you want to read the first three chapters out of sheer morbid curiosity, here you go. You've been warned.

Heh. A friend of mine got one of her books as a gift from a conservative relative and gave it to me. I read about half of it before I began to worry that rolling my eyes that much was going to make them get stuck that way. When I took it (with a bunch of other books) to Powell's to sell the guy gave me a look and pushed it back. Sheepishly I was like "It was a gift." It was the only book out of about 20 or so they wouldn't take.

I found a use for those. I grab a few every once in a while from the church sale (liberal group, probably from relatives, and they usually just throw 'em out when donated), and give them to the dog as she needs new ones. She's always loved chewing books, and usually that means library books or new purchases, since they smell interesting. Eventually we gave in and started giving her her own, and like with shoes, she stopped chewing ours. For a long time, she was on a diet of old textbooks and whatnot in the local used bookstore's free book pile, but I decided it was funnier to give her Rush Limbaugh and Twilight. As long as it's a hardcover, she doesn't care.

Heh. A friend of mine got one of her books as a gift from a conservative relative and gave it to me. I read about half of it before I began to worry that rolling my eyes that much was going to make them get stuck that way. When I took it (with a bunch of other books) to Powell's to sell the guy gave me a look and pushed it back. Sheepishly I was like "It was a gift." It was the only book out of about 20 or so they wouldn't take.

I found a use for those. I grab a few every once in a while from the church sale (liberal group, probably from relatives, and they usually just throw 'em out when donated), and give them to the dog as she needs new ones. She's always loved chewing books, and usually that means library books or new purchases, since they smell interesting. Eventually we gave in and started giving her her own, and like with shoes, she stopped chewing ours. For a long time, she was on a diet of old textbooks and whatnot in the local used bookstore's free book pile, but I decided it was funnier to give her Rush Limbaugh and Twilight. As long as it's a hardcover, she doesn't care.

I have used the NYT Bestseller list as a starting point for those books that I will almost always not read for years. NYT is such a more of a shill point for hack authors than any barometer of a worthy piece of literature.

Besides, it is just a bestseller list, not and indicator of decent content. If it was the NYT Restaurant bestseller list, McDonalds would probably be in the top 5, if not #1.

johnryan51:Did Forbes report this when the RNC bought thousands of Palin's book?

I'm sure the conservative print shops are thrilled when the bulk-buys go unnoticed, but I think they're almost as happy when they don't, and the NYT (etc.) either refuse to list them or put a big fat asterisk on them.

I mean, put yourself in Regnery's shoes. You've just printed 100,000 copies of Marco Rubio's new book, Wisdom and Sacrifice: A Purpose To Serve: Marco Rubio's Low-Fat Not-Too-Ethnic Cuban Cookbook. The Heritage Foundation has already agreed to buy 80,000 of them, so your expenses are covered. But it would be nice if some actual individuals bought the book themselves, for sticker price, rather than waiting for their ninth "complimentary copy" to show up as a thank-you gift from the RNC or the 700 Club or whatever.

So how do you get people to actually shell out money for crap you know perfectly well would never sell in those quantities? I mean, people might like conservative politics, but those are $39 bricks of shiat that nobody wants to ever actually have to read, no matter how much they like the name on the jacket. The answer is, you scream bloody murder about how the lllllllllibrul media is lying, to keep honest conservative 'Murikans from finding out the truth about how popular Rubio's latest book is. Well damn, now a few of those patriots are going to pay list price on principle. Or maybe they'll buy one of your other books.

To judge from the newsletters I see on the desk of an elderly relative every now and again, they do this on pretty much a monthly basis.